Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that the game will be a full on mecha game, as previous Kojima games have featured mecha in the background. With both Policenauts and Metal Gear being notable in that regard.

That said the new logo for Kojima Productions bears an uncanny resemblance to the head of the Raiden Tactical Armor from the anime Gasaraki (shown below). Though there's also a hint of the Blue Knight Berserga from the VOTOMS spin-off novel by the same name too. So Kojima Production’s new game maybe more mecha orientated than Shinkawa is letting on.

Gasaraki was a gritty militaristic mecha anime by Ryosuke Takahashi, of Dougram and VOTOMS fame. The mecha were potent but limited by very strict functional limitations. The designs themselves were also penned by Shinji Aramaki and Yutaka Izubuchi, both veteran real robot mecha designers. So there was a real form follows function vibe about the whole show as a consequence.

If Kojima Productions do go down this route then that would be interesting. There are very few capable games that pull off the approach used in Gasaraki effectively, as in relatively small militaristic mecha with very stringent restrictions placed upon how they operate. Even the Gasaraki game on the PSone tried and failed horribly to recreate this setup.

The new Kojima Productions logo (left) and the Tactical Armor Type 17 Raiden from Gasaraki (right).

This is because the Zone of the Enders combat system was broadly based off Virtual On. With two fixed ranges with weapons shifting their behaviour between each. The issue was that in Zone of the Enders nothing really linked these two ranges, whereas in Virtual On the game utilised fixed vectored dashes to make the covering of range more strategic.

Going back to a more grounded and gritty approach to mecha would help alleviate some of these design issues, as it would need to move away from a purely arcade route.

Regardless, Shinkawa is a brilliant mecha designer and while I don’t don’t hold the Zone of the Enders games in high regard his mechanical design for those games was peerless.

Whatever Kojima Productions has planned though I wish them all the best of luck.